It's that (spring) time of year when life gets really busy! I'm working in the garden, attending either my daughter's or husband's or someone else's musical concerts on at least a weekly basis, and trying to keep up with regular life too.
Last weekend I went on a retreat with the 9th grade confirmation students at church. It was wonderful! The retreat was called "culturing compassion" and led by our Pastor Dee Pederson and a member of our community, Kevin LaNave, who was formerly a youth minister and now told me has a business leading retreats, service projects, and other things of that nature. His business is called the Center for Service Learning and Social Change, and you can visit it here. He did a great job getting the kids interested and keeping them there with games, activities and conversations.
"Culturing Compassion" was most specifically about poverty and Jesus' message to care for the poor. One of the things we did on Saturday afternoon was work at a couple of different service organizations in our town. First we all went to our local Catholic Charities food shelf and bagged up groceries then delivered them to apartments of senior citizens around town.
Then a big group of us went to volunteer at The Message Program which I had never even heard of. This organization, started and still run by one woman, collects what is America's trash and makes it treasure for those in poorer countries like Guatemala. The main thing they process and send for re-use is medical equipment. We worked in a warehouse filled with hospital beds, IV stands, walkers, and other such paraphernalia which to us is old junk but to places with so much less is treasure to be used in setting up and maintaining hospitals and clinics. What we did there was bag up quilts and clothing and linens for sending along with the larger items. Some churches had donated the most beautiful quilts, and places like Once Upon A Child donate the clothing they don't purchase. The kids really got into the work and we got two huge boxes filled with bagged items. When the program gets enough to fill a semi-trailer, then it's time to ship the items out and overseas. It was so wonderful for us all to see this work being done, but sad to find out that many, many times more of this stuff still gets thrown into landfills because there aren't enough organizations doing this work. Anybody feeling called to do more?
We played a game of Monopoly in which the deck had already been stacked to illustrate real life. The adults were the bankers and in my group I had six kids. Each student got an envelope filled with the money and properties with which they'd start the game. Two started with a lot of money and most of the properties (including monopolies in which they had hotels and houses). Two started with a little bit of money and a couple of properties. And two had almost no money and no properties. This, of course, represented being born rich, middle class, or poor. One of the adults said, "did you notice their body language right away?" Yes! The poor kids immediately sat back, got disgusted, slumped in their chair and said, "I'm going to be out of the game right away." Sure enough, as soon as they landed on a property owned by someone else they had to pay more money than they owned and were out. The two rich kids were ecstatic right off. "Woo hoo! I'm rich!" And the two in the middle class tried some creative ways to stay above water, selling their properties for less than they were worth just to try to make a little more to pay off the monopolied guys. But eventually, even the middle class people just couldn't make it work. They would have ended up in debtor's prison if it had been real life! (See this article on Yahoo news today: "Jailed for $280: The Return of Debtor's Prisons".)
You see, the rules of the game are written to protect the monopolies.
A lesson I won't forget is when we talked about how the poor get blamed for being poor. Kevin asked the question, "are the poor lazy?" My answer: sometimes. "Do the poor make bad choices?" Sometimes. Well, how about this: "Are the rich lazy?" Sometimes. "Do the rich make bad choices?" Sometimes. But who's still rich, and who's still poor?
Amen.
Jesus said, it is very hard for the wealthy to get into heaven. It's as hard as a camel (!) trying to get through the eye of a needle (!). Wow. He also said feed the hungry, if you have two coats give your second one to a person who needs one, visit the imprisoned, heal the sick, give up everything you have and follow me. "The poor will always be with us", he said, so we'll always have this work to do.
This always slays me. I have lived on a very low income, considered poverty even, but I have never been poor. I wasn't born poor. I have at least 10 coats. And my shoe closet keeps expanding. I've never been hungry for more than a few hours.
I'm glad I've never been hungry, and that my kids haven't been either. But am I doing enough to follow Jesus' commands? No, of course not. And I call myself a Christian.
Last weekend I went on a retreat with the 9th grade confirmation students at church. It was wonderful! The retreat was called "culturing compassion" and led by our Pastor Dee Pederson and a member of our community, Kevin LaNave, who was formerly a youth minister and now told me has a business leading retreats, service projects, and other things of that nature. His business is called the Center for Service Learning and Social Change, and you can visit it here. He did a great job getting the kids interested and keeping them there with games, activities and conversations.
"Culturing Compassion" was most specifically about poverty and Jesus' message to care for the poor. One of the things we did on Saturday afternoon was work at a couple of different service organizations in our town. First we all went to our local Catholic Charities food shelf and bagged up groceries then delivered them to apartments of senior citizens around town.
Then a big group of us went to volunteer at The Message Program which I had never even heard of. This organization, started and still run by one woman, collects what is America's trash and makes it treasure for those in poorer countries like Guatemala. The main thing they process and send for re-use is medical equipment. We worked in a warehouse filled with hospital beds, IV stands, walkers, and other such paraphernalia which to us is old junk but to places with so much less is treasure to be used in setting up and maintaining hospitals and clinics. What we did there was bag up quilts and clothing and linens for sending along with the larger items. Some churches had donated the most beautiful quilts, and places like Once Upon A Child donate the clothing they don't purchase. The kids really got into the work and we got two huge boxes filled with bagged items. When the program gets enough to fill a semi-trailer, then it's time to ship the items out and overseas. It was so wonderful for us all to see this work being done, but sad to find out that many, many times more of this stuff still gets thrown into landfills because there aren't enough organizations doing this work. Anybody feeling called to do more?
We played a game of Monopoly in which the deck had already been stacked to illustrate real life. The adults were the bankers and in my group I had six kids. Each student got an envelope filled with the money and properties with which they'd start the game. Two started with a lot of money and most of the properties (including monopolies in which they had hotels and houses). Two started with a little bit of money and a couple of properties. And two had almost no money and no properties. This, of course, represented being born rich, middle class, or poor. One of the adults said, "did you notice their body language right away?" Yes! The poor kids immediately sat back, got disgusted, slumped in their chair and said, "I'm going to be out of the game right away." Sure enough, as soon as they landed on a property owned by someone else they had to pay more money than they owned and were out. The two rich kids were ecstatic right off. "Woo hoo! I'm rich!" And the two in the middle class tried some creative ways to stay above water, selling their properties for less than they were worth just to try to make a little more to pay off the monopolied guys. But eventually, even the middle class people just couldn't make it work. They would have ended up in debtor's prison if it had been real life! (See this article on Yahoo news today: "Jailed for $280: The Return of Debtor's Prisons".)
You see, the rules of the game are written to protect the monopolies.
A lesson I won't forget is when we talked about how the poor get blamed for being poor. Kevin asked the question, "are the poor lazy?" My answer: sometimes. "Do the poor make bad choices?" Sometimes. Well, how about this: "Are the rich lazy?" Sometimes. "Do the rich make bad choices?" Sometimes. But who's still rich, and who's still poor?
Amen.
Jesus said, it is very hard for the wealthy to get into heaven. It's as hard as a camel (!) trying to get through the eye of a needle (!). Wow. He also said feed the hungry, if you have two coats give your second one to a person who needs one, visit the imprisoned, heal the sick, give up everything you have and follow me. "The poor will always be with us", he said, so we'll always have this work to do.
This always slays me. I have lived on a very low income, considered poverty even, but I have never been poor. I wasn't born poor. I have at least 10 coats. And my shoe closet keeps expanding. I've never been hungry for more than a few hours.
I'm glad I've never been hungry, and that my kids haven't been either. But am I doing enough to follow Jesus' commands? No, of course not. And I call myself a Christian.
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